Monday, December 10, 2007

Autistic Boy in ICU Unit: FirstEnergyCorp Incompetence

He is now in the Intensive Care Unit of St. Vincent Hospital , a burn victim. The 14-year-old autistic inner city boy tried to warm up because of his cold house and his clothes caught fire. As I reported in an earlier post, FirstEnergy [Toledo Edison] had shut off the power to his house, and due to their incompetence in restoring the power, the autistic boy, still chilled to the core, used the oven for heat and caught his clothes on fire. He has 3rd degree burns on his arms and chest and is in need of skin grafts. He will remain in ICU for another week.

I wrote about this family a week ago [here] and today we were informed of the burned boy's condition. In that post I reported that the FirstEnergy bill and fine was paid on a Friday afternoon, but, due to much incompetence by Toledo Edison, was not turned on until afternoon on Tuesday. That afternoon I met the boy and could not believe how cold his hands were- they felt like the hands of a corpse!

The furnace at his rental house took a long time to bring the temperature back up from near-freezing and apparently his autism failed to warn him of the dangers of his action.

The $1.6 billion profit earned by FirstEnergy in the 3rd quarter comes at quite a human cost.

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